Raspberry Pi project leader Eben Upton talks about the state of Raspberry Pi, and tells us that yes -- finally -- they now have distributors in the U.S. and other countries instead trying to ship every unit from the U.K. Even better, instead of buying a batch of boards, selling them, and only then ordering another batch, the new distribution agreements mean they can keep a steady flow of orders coming in and going out.

Mine is April 23rd, and yes very much worth the wait! I have several projects in mind, as well as possibly gifting one to my 11 year old niece who has shown an interest in computers and game development.

I'm looking at using my first board as a test bed for projects like an XBMC media center, Android-based car computer, MAME/Console emulator (think one of those mini tabletop arcade machines with a 7" screen and real controls), home security/automation control center, maybe even wearable computing.

For each successful project I'll order another board to complete the package, and continue testing with the original.

1) requires a 3 button mouse, absolutely will not function correctly without one! (I had an A7000 with a PS/2 port, and damn, when I misplaced the mouse it came with, I was screwed!)

2) co-operative multitasking kind of sucks.

3) lack of memory protection is a big issue.

4) some very strange design decisions that no one else picked up, and for a good reason!

5) hardly any of the legacy software will run. I found that even on my A7000, which had a really low end ARM processor when compared to RISC PC's. Though, I did get a copy of Elite to run, which was really cool!

For a lot of Brits of my age, RISCOS is full of nostalgia. Like Commodore 64 or Apple 2 for Americans. The built in basic is good. The built in basic has an inline assembler, which is amazing. But, the OS itself (and pare in mind 3.7 was the last version I used) is kind of ugly and sort of unfinished looking. It's no BeOS for looks.